


In Actuality

by VickyVicarious



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-10
Updated: 2011-10-10
Packaged: 2018-11-09 16:34:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11108505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VickyVicarious/pseuds/VickyVicarious
Summary: Four truths about Heiwajima Shizuo. Summarized: he does not get rage blackouts, he kisses like a girl, he forgets to feel pain, and he is basically content.





	1. Anger

Heiwajima Shizuo does not get rage blackouts.

Instead, he is perfectly aware of his surroundings and actions at all times. The world doesn't blur or fade away. He doesn't lose his sense of self or time or reason. No, Shizuo always knows _exactly_ what he is doing.

He knows, but he doesn't care.

What happens when Heiwajima Shizuo gets angry is a several-step process, but it always starts like this: someone irritates him. He doesn't have to be _furious_ – just irritated. One sure-fire way to do this is to lie about or otherwise misrepresent love. Another way is to talk about Hanejima Yuuhei like you know him or possess him. A third is to gang up on someone much weaker, or otherwise go after the helpless. There are myriad other reasons Shizuo becomes irritated, but those are the most frequent causes.

From irritation, it's a simple step to frustration: if the behaviour continues for any significant length of time. Orihara Izaya is the only person truly capable of throwing Shizuo into an immediate rage; short of suddenly trying to kill someone, it's really hard for other people to get Shizuo immediately angry. Of course, since most people don't notice his warning signs, his tempers seem very sudden to them.

Warning signs include heavy smoking, clenching fists, gritted teeth, glaring, and deep breaths. Sometimes there will be a verbal warning from the man himself, but generally by the time Shizuo talks it's already too late to take anything back. (That also annoys him, when people will suddenly try to reform their behaviors around him out of fear.)

Of course, his reputation creates such a skewed impression of him in the first place, not to mention that he smokes frequently when he isn't angry as well, and he generally wears sunglasses that make it harder to read his expression. So most people don't ever pick up on Shizuo's warning signals; instead the vast majority make it a policy to just avoid him altogether to be on the safe side.

But if someone fails to back away swiftly enough, or if Shizuo has already become irritated and some foolish delinquent or other continues the behaviour that got on his nerves in the first place… then Shizuo will cross a line in his mind.

It's the limit for most people, the marker beyond which his enormous strength lies. On rare occasions, other people can also cross that line – the classic example of a mother lifting a car off of her children comes to mind – but for Shizuo, it's an easy step that requires no extra exertion and is shown only through dropping his cigarette and crushing it under a foot.

Beyond that line, the world shifts around him. He is completely and utterly aware of everything, he _knows what he is doing_ , he even plans his attacks to the extent he ever plans anything.

Because when Shizuo is in such a rage, his morals slip away. His reasons for attacking _make sense_ to him. A stalker, claiming love; a delinquent, attacking a helpless woman; Izaya, showing his face in Shizuo's city – they are all _asking_ to be attacked.

The world around him shifts. He does not see people, vending machines, stop signs, or even trees – everything is a potential weapon, everything a possible way to show the person in front of him what he deserves.

"Who do you think you are?" Shizuo often asks his victims. "Do you think you're God? Huh?" Or: "You just attacked me. That means you wanted to kill me. So that means if I kill you, it's okay, right?"

He's not just saying these things. He really means them. His logic warps and, rather than being unable to stop himself, when in a rage Shizuo simply loses all _inclination_ to do so. That's at least part of the reason why, when he calms down, Shizuo feels so ashamed of himself. Every time he comes down from a rage, however brief or destructive, Shizuo feels as though he has lost yet another battle in a war, and the casualties are everyone around him just as much as his own emotions.

And, in a sense, that's why Heiwajima Shizuo is so dangerous – not because of his strength, but because no matter how much he cares both before and after the fact, during his violent rampages, he is capable of just about anything.

He won't attack those he views as innocent, but then – that doesn't mean he will protect them, either. Sometimes, he might, through sheer accident or his own fury cooling just in time. But just as frequently, Shizuo will fail to even notice or care about the damage he causes property or people. It's been that way ever since his youth, even though at least once his lack of caring for his surroundings has caused him to lose something very important to him.

Only once in his life has Shizuo won a battle in his never-ending war with his own mind (because it _is_ his mind he fights against; however monstrous his strength, it is at least understood and controlled when he's calm; he never breaks things _accidentally_ ) and that was when the Slashers, the many children of the demon-sword Saika attacked him.

But, at that time Shizuo wasn't angry. He was frustrated, perhaps, but he didn't have any one person to be angry at – and Shizuo never loses it without a focus for his fury. So, at that time Shizuo was still in control of his mind and though he was fighting so very many people, they were all innocent as far as he was concerned, and in a sense it was almost easy not to seriously harm them. It wasn't really easy, of course; no matter how superb his control might be, the situation itself, with them refusing to stay down due to their possession, made not destroying any lives a conscious effort.

The effects of that one battle won are both great and small; Shizuo has gained a sort of mental peace with his strength, at least, and to some extent his temper as well. The victorious feeling of knowing he didn't kill anyone even with literally hundreds of people surrounding him and trying to (as good as) kill _him_ ; it makes it easier for Shizuo to focus on what he really _wants_ rather than the irritation bubbling up inside him. And since Shizuo only wants to live in peace, remembering his desire to do so makes it easier for him to calm himself down – a huge victory.

At the same time though, the victory is meaningless and has made no difference whatsoever, because he may be able to stop the process more frequently now, but only the beginning stages. Shizuo still has no control over his mind when that switch is flipped and his rage takes over. He still abruptly, if briefly, changes his whole philosophy and, focused on ending a single thing, would gladly destroy the whole world without minding in the slightest.

In a sense, it's not his fault. The switch, though rarely flipped for any other human, has always had the same effect. Any human experiencing that huge surge of strength does so with a single-minded kind of determination that leaves no room for concern of anything outside its focal point. If the mother lifting the car off her child had to tip it over on top of someone else in order to save her child's life, she would probably do just that and not think twice about it.

But for Shizuo, his focal point is generally not saving people – thanks to his temper, it's _destroying_ them. And since his switch is so easily flipped, the fact that he reacts the same as anyone else would afterwards makes no difference. He holds himself to an impossibly unfair higher standard and he _should_ , for all he constantly fails to meet it.

And so, no matter how he tries, until Shizuo's mind follows the lead of his body and accomplishes the impossible, he will never gain peace. Until he becomes capable of changing that hyper-focus into a more general determination, until he blunts that essential knife's edge hidden inside every human, Shizuo will never win his war.

Unfortunately, the world around him will pay the price. Because, yes, Shizuo is one hundred percent aware of his every action, and when in control of himself, he'd give anything to undo what he's done.

But so long as he doesn't care, he'll do it over again a thousand times, and laugh all the while.


	2. Love

Heiwajima Shizuo kisses like a girl.

Or at least like how a girl is generally _expected_ to kiss: he is hesitant, cautious, rarely the initiator, and so very soft and careful and sweet. He kisses like it's his first time, like he's unsure and shy, like he's standing on a wire and could fall off at any time if he isn't _just-so_ , like he's totally in awe and in love.

Which is funny, because Shizuo has never been in love.

He has _loved_ , certainly. He loves his brother with a fierceness rarely seen. The two are close to what many people would deem an unhealthy degree, for all that they rarely see each-other. They _understand_ each-other, though, which is quite a feat considering who they are; the ice-cold actor and the explosion-prone monster, both famous for very different reasons. Shizuo loves his little brother to the point of blind trust; if Kasuka says something Shizuo will believe it, no matter what proof there might be to the contrary. He would do anything for his brother – with that kind of love, there isn't a _need_ for frequent contact, though Shizuo does at times miss Kasuka regardless and wish the actor's schedule allowed more visits.

Shizuo loves his parents, as well. But in a very passive sort of way – it's almost an obligatory love. He knows they love him too, but probably in the same way, no more than necessary. He's just caused them too much trouble, cost them too much money and darkened their reputations, added stress into their lives and generally made everything more difficult. They've had to take him to the hospital far more often than any parent should, and that also added some distance into the relationship. His parents are good people, and they don't resent Shizuo for how he is, but they find it hard to relate to him. Hard even to get concerned for him, when it's been proven over and over and _over_ again that he is well nigh indestructible.

And Shizuo has his pride, too. He doesn't like causing his parents difficulties even if they never complain, which is why he struck out on his own immediately after high school and never asked them for anything since, no matter how difficult things got. He hasn't really visited them either, but he knows they don't mind. They are perfectly ordinary people who deserve to be able to live in a perfectly ordinary world; and both their sons are so different and strange that he knows they found it difficult to raise them. So he lets Kasuka be successful, lets his parents focus on that and actually have a real pride in one of their children, which makes them feel better about themselves as well, helps settle that quiet question they've always had, 'is it our fault?'

Shizuo stays out of their way and rarely ever thinks about them. But he does still love them, even if they haven't ever understood him. It's just a lesser level of love, but it is certainly still there.

Of course, his family members aren't the only people Shizuo loves. He might be hesitant to call it _love_ , exactly, but he really does value Shinra. It's kind of nice being viewed as an interesting phenomenon rather than a beast, something to study rather than fear, but it's kind of irritating too. Still, he was lonely enough when they first met to not mind all that much, and he's just sort of gotten in the habit. Shinra is a good friend, if not the closest; still, Shizuo knows he can go to him with his problems – or with two gunshot wounds – and not be turned away. That's nice. And there are other things too, seemingly little things, like the fact that Shinra bought steel cups in the hopes Shizuo wouldn't break them.

He only had to fear Shizuo breaking his cups because he often says annoying things that make Shizuo _feel_ like breaking his cups. But on the other hand, he expects Shizuo to be around often enough to make the special purchase worth it (even though it was useless in the end as Shizuo can easily crumple steel cups in his fist). And that's… so incredibly rare. Shizuo really counts on that friendship, wouldn't trade it, and secretly does love Shinra for so easily creating and continuing such a bond.

And there's Tom too, of course. Tom, Shizuo wouldn't hesitate to say he loves… as a friend though, of course. Ever since they were in middle school, and despite their violent introduction and Shizuo's own somewhat well-deserved reputation, Tom has never treated him differently from other people. He's been kind, friendly, calm, helpful, and he's never made Shizuo angry. Because Tom is careful, he has avoided ever being the focus of Shizuo's rage, something that can't even be said about Kasuka. Admittedly, Shizuo's temper flared up even more ridiculously easily when he was young, but even so Tom's accomplishment is admirable. Especially since, despite being cautious to avoid Shizuo's anger, Tom isn't overly cautious. He doesn't fail to give his opinion or to contradict Shizuo or anything of the sort; he just picks the best way to do so, in his laconic, casual voice, the voice Shizuo's learned to trust so well that it can sometimes even serve to snap him out of a rampage without even being raised.

Tom has never steered Shizuo wrong. And he's always helped Shizuo; even when it had been years since they'd last seen each-other, he went out of his way to offer Shizuo a job perfect for him. So certainly Shizuo loves Tom, looks up to his perpetual senpai, trusts him implicitly.

And then there's his best friend. Shizuo loves his best friend as well, even if she is something most people wouldn't even acknowledge as real. Even if, for the longest time, he didn't know the simplest details about her – didn't even know she was a girl. Shizuo just knew the Black Rider, knew Ikebukuro's second monster, knew someone kind and goodhearted, someone who understood him on a level no one else, not even Kasuka, could. He didn't bother to ask questions. He didn't even feel the slightest impulse to do so.

Shizuo and Celty rarely speak. They don't really need to, in order to understand each-other – they've got this connection, this feeling of being on the same level. Shizuo could tell Celty anything, if he wanted. He knows that, and sometimes he does tell her his thoughts, but just as often he doesn't, because they don't have such a superficial friendship that it hinges on communication. When they are together, Shizuo and Celty can just exist, without feeling as though they are breaking any laws of the universe or doing anything wrong. That's got a value no one else could understand, because no one else has been what Shizuo and Celty are.

And while five people and one dullahan might seem a small number to love, Shizuo isn't really bothered by that. He doesn't ever get lonely so much as envious of being _able_ to interact with more people. It's the ability he wants, more than the result. So Shizuo loves only those five people and one dullahan, and no more. It's not even that he's previously loved more people, and doesn't anymore. These six are the _only_ people Shizuo has ever loved, and he doesn't expect to ever stop doing so. He believes, though he's never mentioned it aloud, that he isn't capable of losing his love. His feelings will never waver, once they've established themselves. Even simple suggestions from a loved one, such as Tom's idea that Shizuo bleach his hair, will be rigidly adhered to until the end of time. Gifts, like Kasuka's bartender suits, will be treasured. Once Shizuo starts to love someone, it's a one-way street.

And this quality is probably the reason Shizuo has never been in love, the reason he's so cautious and gentle and oddly _delicate_ about dating matters. Shizuo isn't really the type to love at first sight, and he believes that once he's in love that will be it for the rest of his life, so he is _careful_.

He tries so hard to do things right.

Shizuo's had a few crushes in his life: the woman with the bakery was his first, and it ended so terribly that he's been incredibly hesitant about acting on any later ones. He's never once just gone up to a girl and asked her out. Instead, he takes things slow – so very, very slow and careful, _cautious_ and usually he scares the girl away before even coming close to a date.

Because Shizuo never tries to hide who he is. He never pretends to be normal, never acts ordinary because if he managed to actually trick a woman into loving him like that, he might very well fall in love with her himself. And then when she found out about his strength, his fury, she would be _scared_ , she might even get _hurt_ , and Shizuo would never forgive himself that.

And he does get lonely, does need female companionship sometimes. He is handsome and knows this; Kasuka's career got its start when a recruiter failed to interest Shizuo but noticed his younger brother instead. And sometimes women approach him. Less frequently now that he is so well known, but it does happen. Some of them just want the bragging rights, to be able to tell that they've slept with Ikebukuro's Fortissimo, and Shizuo generally turns those ones down.

But sometimes, girls really mean it. There was a girl, once, who truly liked him. She asked him out on the last day of high-school because she knew it was her last chance. And they went out for a while – slow, _slow_ dates and eventually Shizuo bent his head down and kissed her, so hesitantly and carefully and gently that she, who was quite shy herself, felt she had to take the lead and was the one to press for more. They went out for a couple of months after that before Shizuo inevitably lost it in front of her. She'd known of his temper, of course, but people tell Shizuo that the sheer menace he radiates, the aura of utter violence surrounding him in his rages, is something indescribable in words and utterly terrifying. So given that, he wasn't surprised that she broke up with him shortly after, unable to reconcile the shy, gentle boy she knew with the depraved monster she had seen.

That was Shizuo's longest relationship, but there have been others. He's dated a couple different girls, and he's had a few one night stands, but for the most part Shizuo spends his life without any romantic companionship. His strength and rage always drive them away in the end, and that's why he is so utterly cautious, so oddly girl-like in his kisses and considerate in his touches. Shizuo _knows_ , at the start of each relationship, that it's probably only a matter of time until it ends. But he always hopes it won't, always tries to be the right sort of boyfriend and to be gentle enough that he won't ruin everything again, tries his hardest to make it last so that if he falls in love, when he falls in love, he'll be able to stay with the woman he loves forever.

Shizuo is a man who really believes in romance and happy endings and wants one for himself, despite knowing how rare they really are. He knows love doesn't always come in expected ways, knows love can be difficult and heartbreaking and worth it anyway, and he wants that more than just about anything else.

That's why he doesn't tolerate any sort of perversion of love well. To Shizuo, romantic love is such a sacred, unattainable thing that when he sees other people mocking it in any way, it utterly infuriates him.

Shizuo kisses like a girl, dates like a gentleman, respects and values women, trusts and is true, and probably will never find the kind of love he wants, because no one is likely to stick around long enough. And he _knows_ this, and he clings to any sort of love he finds with stubborn devotion, and he resolutely doesn't let the fact that he's never been in love bother him.

Shizuo knows how hopeless it probably is, he knows that all too well.

But he _hopes_ – and is careful, so very careful every single time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> After having written this chapter, I was informed that according to the light novels, Shizuo hadn't ever had a girlfriend. I'd recalled it as actually only saying he didn't have any luck with them and that his bad luck was related to his strength. I interpreted that as him having few relationships, none lasting very long. 
> 
> Apparently I was wrong though, so let's just say this is canon-adjacent rather than truly compliant.


	3. Pain

Heiwajima Shizuo forgets to feel pain.

He's perfectly capable of hurting; but throughout his life, he's experienced _so much_ physical pain that eventually, it lost its hold on him. His tolerance for pain grew, that would be the normal way to phrase it, except that his tolerance never really did grow, because he could _tolerate_ any sort of pain from a very early age. And he did.

For one touted as superhuman, Shizuo spent a lot of his childhood in hospitals.

There were broken bones; there were torn muscles; concussions when he dropped something very heavy onto his own head in his shock at being able to lift it; more broken bones, from slamming his knuckles through walls, fences, metal; cramped muscles; broken bones again; cracked ribs; doctor-created incisions to remove the tips of needles that had broken off inside his skin; broken bones yet again and seemingly forever; and once, chicken pox.

All this, before he even hit twelve years old. Yes, Shizuo was well acquainted with pain as a boy, and even from the start he never complained about it. It was self-inflicted, after all, and he'd been the stoic type right from the start. So he didn't say a word, just ached and ached and _ached_.

His sweet tooth got started when the nurses grew fond of him after his third hospital visit, and began to bring him lollipops whenever they entered the room. His liking of milk was originally an effort to help his bones grow stronger to prevent them from breaking all the time, a suggestion from Kasuka. He spent more time in a hospital room than in elementary school, probably, and wore casts like most other kids wore braces.

And through all of this time, only once did Shizuo fail to feel the pain he was in. But that one time was the precursor to all the others, the reason why today he can get shot twice and not even notice until he falls, why he can take a pen stabbing straight through his hand and just get a little annoyed at having to glue it up or something before the blood gets all over his clothes.

The first time Shizuo fails to feel pain is the time his parents are investigated for child abuse. A woman visits Shizuo in the hospital and speaks to him quietly, soothingly, with great concern and sympathy. She assures him he's done nothing wrong when he tells her being in the hospital so much is his own fault, and asks him if his parents told him that.

He kind of laughs at that and tells her everyone knows it, and her eyes get wide and her lips press together, and she says she _sees_. The conversation continues in that vein for a little while, with Shizuo a little confused and a lot distracted because pain medication never seems to relieve him nearly as much as everyone tells him it's supposed to, and his broken ankle and toes (from kicking a concrete water fountain in the park and cracking it almost in two, breaking the pipes) really hurt. Because he is so distracted by the pain, he doesn't understand what she's thinking for the longest time, and it's only when she asks him if they ever _touch him_ too, that he realizes something is wrong.

He denies this vigorously, denies his parents' ever doing anything wrong, because it's obvious _he_ is the abnormal one and they do their best to help him, and she looks at him like she sees right through him. And then – then she brings up Kasuka. Then she tells Shizuo that it's his responsibility as an older brother to protect Kasuka, _from their parents_.

The next thing anyone knows, she's screaming and Shizuo is roaring and throwing his bed at her, the heart monitor, anything he can find, and she runs and he chases her, chases her all the way out to the parking lot while yelling swearwords he's not supposed to know and demanding to hear if she still thinks it's his _parents_ ' fault. The poor woman, terrified, drives away and never comes back, and Shizuo stands in the parking lot, shaking and muttering violent threats under his breath for the next fifteen minutes.

It's only when he turns to walk back to his room and apologize to the nurses and maybe get a lollipop to help him calm down, and instead crumples to the road right in front of an oncoming car, that he remembers his broken ankle. The car smashes into his side and sends him skidding across the pavement, breaking his arm for the seventh time; Shizuo lets out a quiet sort of grunt at the returning and added pain, and limps back inside under his own power.

That's the first time Shizuo forgets about pain. He switches hospitals after that and the nurses at the new one don't give him lollipops but he figures that's about what he deserves anyway for wrecking so much expensive equipment, so he doesn't complain. Anyway, it wasn't too long after that when Shizuo's body began to really adjust to its strength and his hospital visits grew less and less frequent.

The second time Shizuo forgets to feel pain, he is almost sixteen and has far less noble reasons. He has just met Orihara Izaya, and he is so _angry_ that all other emotion has gone out the window, including any response to the knife slicing through his skin. Something about the other boy activates a switch on some deep, instinctual level inside of Shizuo. Something about Izaya is just _wrong_ , just awful and cunning and sadistic and really _screwed up_. And he just – from first sight, he's a pest. A bloodsucking flea.

Izaya makes Shizuo want to punch him. Just until his head flies off and he's no longer recognizable as being once purportedly human. That's all.

And every time Shizuo, being really a decent person when you get down to it, starts to feel guilty about taking this attitude, Izaya does something like send _a gang of twenty guys_ after him. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift _weaponry_. A gang of twenty guys wielding makeshift weaponry, who force Shizuo to get _violent_.

Shizuo HATES having to get violent.

And it's like he can tell, from the moment he sets eyes on this Izaya guy Shinra's been trying to introduce to him, that Izaya is going to bring this sort of shit into his life. So Shizuo gets mad, right at the start. Mad enough to not even register the attack that Izaya has landed on him, let alone to spare any feeling for the pain it caused. And though the knife-wound is far from the worst injury Shizuo's ever received, it has arguably one of the largest effects on him. Because from then on, Shizuo starts to forget to feel pain more and more frequently.

At first, it's probably because Izaya never allows him time to recover. He sends groups of thugs after Shizuo so frequently that any wounds Shizuo acquires don't have the chance to heal over before being reopened, even with Shinra's expert care. But Shizuo thinks it would be stupid to waste time in a fight worrying about his hands hurting from the last time he uprooted a metal pole and stabbed them on a jagged edge of it, for example. Even if the guys Shizuo is fighting are no match for him whatsoever, they at least deserve to have his full attention, as a matter of decency if nothing else. So Shizuo begins to get in the habit of ignoring, then even forgetting about the pain he's in.

But he does still feel pain, out of fights at least, and sometimes in them, until he is in his early twenties and has just been fired from his precious bartending job (because Izaya, THAT FLEA, has framed him). Released reluctantly from the police station, Shizuo's in heavy debt and probably on parole or something, he wasn't listening all that closely.

Even though it's been a few days, and Shizuo has calmed down enough to answer the police officers' questions for the most part, he is still so very incredibly _murderously_ furious. So when, upon reaching his apartment, he finds out that he's been kicked out for not paying his rent, Shizuo gathers his belongings, walks a few miles until he is in a somewhat seedy area, picks a sturdy-looking wall, and calmly begins to punch it.

Again and again, continuously for at least an hour, Shizuo steadily punches the wall. When it crumbles into rubble, he just moves to the next and starts punching again. Shizuo feels that if he stops punching, he will collapse, or cry, or just start to absolutely _lose it_ , because honestly his life has just been ruined.

That job was his last hope, Shizuo's last desperate chance – and it was honestly _succeeding_ , too. It wasn't exactly a matter of whether Shizuo enjoyed bartending or not, because he would have loved that job regardless, simply on the basis of still _having_ it. And Kasuka was proud of him for that, he brought Shizuo a gift and reprimand and hope for the future, and life was starting to work in Shizuo's favor for once, for the first time, and he had really thought he would be able to become a calm and peaceful person.

_And then Izaya ruined everything_.

Shizuo doesn't even have it in him to be angry at Izaya right now. Because a flea will be a flea and he should have expected something like this, but after a few months he got complacent. He started to feel content, maybe even _happy_.

But now he has been taught better than to ever attempt happiness again – or something melodramatic like that, anyway. There's probably some bitter irony or metaphor or life lesson here, but Shizuo doesn't give a crap about that. All he cares about right now is the punch-breathe-punch rhythm he's got going and how it is keeping him somewhat sane. He _certainly_ isn't going to stop punching just because his hands are shredding under the repeated collisions, leaving bloody spots on the stone, and causing Shizuo a sharp, agonizing pain with each new impact.

This goes on for a while. Shizuo has long since lost track of time. But he's knocked down three walls so far, so it's probably been a while when a ragged figure darts down the alley towards him. The scruffy man is fleeing another, much cleaner figure, who yells with a familiar voice, "Stop! Quit running, it's not going to help– _Shizuo_ , is that you? Stop that guy, please!"

Shizuo spins around mid-punch, catches the runner by the throat, and lifts him off the ground. All this was done pretty much automatically, because the voice that called out to him was one he recognizes from middle-school as someone to trust.

"Tom-senpai?" Shizuo asks in mild disbelief.

"Shizuo! Thank you – this jerk's actually pretty fast. How have you been?" Tom slows to a stop in front of Shizuo, with a genuine smile at his old friend, and no care whatsoever for the guy currently dangling in the air by his throat, struggling in vain and letting out choking noises occasionally.

Shizuo ignores the guy in his grip, too. Tom would have said something if Shizuo was doing anything wrong, and the guy looks like scum, anyway. "Um, okay. I guess."

Tom has always been good at seeing through Shizuo, or maybe it's the blood cascading from Shizuo's fists and the three collapsed walls that clues him in, but he plays it cool and only says, "Hmm. Shizuo, do you want a job?"

Shizuo shouldn't be surprised, that's just like Tom. But at the same time it comes so perfectly exactly when he most needs the offer, that he is totally overwhelmed and perhaps even a little bit joyful. He forgets about the pain he is in.

"Actually, I just lost my old job," Shizuo says, surprising himself with how casual he sounds. "So, yeah, I could use the work. Thanks, Tom-senpai."

Tom smiles at him, and begins to lead the way out of the alley. He doesn't explain what the job is, and it doesn't even occur to Shizuo to ask. Instead, they chat and catch up with each other and continue to ignore the now-unconscious guy Shizuo eventually just slings over one shoulder.

That day, Shizuo does more than forget the pain – he forgets the injury altogether, and only remembers it when reminded by Tom offering to wrap up his fists in gauze. And if the cut from Izaya's knife has _one of_ the largest effects on him, the broken knuckles Shizuo gave himself that day definitely have _the_ greatest effect.

That was a turning point for Shizuo. After then, he never even bothered to feel the pain in the first place, until he was staring straight at the cause of it, and not often even then. He couldn't say _why_ exactly that encounter made Shizuo become this way. It just did, and Shizuo is very good at accepting such things without question.

Ever since that day, Heiwajima Shizuo has had no room left for physical pain. Instead, other things fill the gap. Sometimes it's just _emotional_ pain; sometimes more pleasant emotions. Sometimes it's nothing but a lazy sort of ennui, no mere broken bones enough to affect Ikebukuro's greatest beast.

But eventually, it becomes habit. Nothing really injures Shizuo anymore, not accidentally anyway. And since whenever he is injured, it tends to be from the deliberate actions of one of his enemies, any sort of painful sensation now typically registers to Shizuo as 'someone is being very irritating' rather than 'ow'.

In fact, Shizuo doesn't think it's all that special, being able to forget pain. No matter how much Shinra raves about it, Shizuo remains unimpressed by his ability.

Rather, he is sort of envious of people who _do_ feel pain. Shizuo doesn't understand why they would let the pain get to them so much, since even when he did feel every hit, he still never let it show or stop him from doing anything. But the rest of the world has never been so stubborn, and pain stops them dead in their tracks. They cry and carry on and behave in ridiculous manners – and other people comfort them, take care of them.

People treat the injured like children, except that even as a child Shizuo was too strong to accept such treatment so he doesn't recognize it that way. He only sees that when other, normal people are in pain, they are almost never left to suffer through it alone, in the way people's faith in his strength mean he was and often still is.

This is the reason, though Shizuo doesn't realize it, that ever since that meeting with Tom he has forgone physical pain. Because at that time, Tom could see the damage done to Shizuo's hands, but he could also see the damage done to Shizuo's soul, and _that_ was the one he moved to fix. Shizuo values that sort of comfort far more than any that superficial bawling might bring. And yet he _does_ envy the more fragile examples of humankind, because they can find comfort whenever they want it, whereas Shizuo can't. He wouldn't let himself, even if he could.

Shizuo has always been strong enough to stand on his own, and in all likelihood he always will be. It's marvelous, the way he does it, amazing, incredible, lonely.

But he can't change his essence, and so Shizuo does not register physical pain, does not complain about emotional pain, and continues standing tall, as he has always done. He does not mention that to him, the weak seem much happier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not sure how old Shizuo was when he met Izaya - but I'm thinking they were freshman when they met, making the age range something like 15-16, since high-school in Japan lasts three years.
> 
> Also, I totally made up how Shizuo got his job with Tom, in case that wasn't clear enough.


	4. Happiness

Heiwajima Shizuo is basically content.

Certainly, he has his stresses just like anyone else. A wonderful, perfectly fitting job that nonetheless forces him to confront the scum of the online-dating world on a daily basis; a bad case of _flea_ ; the usual thugs, psychotic pen-wielding schoolboys, and tazer-brandishing yakuza heirs trying to kill him; those damn Dollars and Yellow Scarves and Blue Squares and Pink Eyemasks or whatever the fuck is next, with all their idiotic gang war nonsense; bills.

Shizuo has plenty of things to get irritated about. And he does, don't make any mistake about that. Shizuo gets pissed off, Shizuo loses control, Shizuo throws vending machines and parking meters and trash cans and even the occasional small tree or wailing journalist. Shizuo terrifies the public and tries to murder Izaya, and then he smokes another cigarette to calm himself down, and he starts walking.

Even for such a pedestrian city, even considering that he rarely ever leaves Ikebukuro, Shizuo walks far more than the average person. Whenever he's not otherwise occupied, he tends to wander the streets, and in fact he never takes the subway or metro around. He doesn't like it –odd, for a Tokyo native, but there it is. Part of this attitude is born from Shizuo's nervousness about his temper, or rather what would happen if he lost it in a confined, fragile space such as a car or train. But mostly, it's just how he is – Shizuo is simply the kind of person who likes to get around on his own two feet.

He won't say no to driving if necessary, and he's actually very fond of riding on the back of Celty's motorcycle, but if left to his own devices he's not going to seek anything like that out.

And there are effects from all of this walking around. Firstly, Shizuo knows his city very well. He is familiar with every street, alley, and park Ikebukuro has to offer. Not so much in any other district of Tokyo, as Shizuo generally stays within 'Bukuro, but he still can navigate fairly easily throughout most of Japan's capital city. In Ikebukuro, though, Shizuo knows all the big landmarks, and he knows the dozens of smaller ones, too. He knows the best little cafes tucked away down a side-street or seven; where to get a good haircut for half the usual price; the location and times he can expect parks to be peaceful and quiet; a bar that seats only six but has the best drinks in town; tiny but amazing family-owned chocolate stores, restaurants, flower shops, grocery stores; a reliable dry-cleaner's; and the location of most every cigarette vendor in all of Ikebukuro.

But even more so than knowing the city itself, Shizuo sees the people it contains, both good and bad. He's not going to claim that he 'knows' them – Shizuo has never been very astute about social matters, and the only person he will claim to truly _understand_ is himself. And he is so far from even the oddest of most other people that for the most part, Shizuo doesn't attempt to transfer that knowledge into predicting or interpreting other peoples' actions.

Shizuo doesn't claim to understand the people he sees, but he does at least see them, and in watching the people surrounding him, he has over the years come to realize a few things about his own life.

Namely, that it's not so bad.

It's not that great, either – but, it's not terrible. Because Shizuo _does_ actually know himself, he has been able to compare himself to the people he observes while walking around the city for endless hours, and he's come to the conclusion that he's pretty much content.

He has a job, a home, a family, and friends. That's a lot more than some people have, even if each of those things he has is less (smaller, fewer, further distant) than most.

Shizuo is, at heart, a laid-back sort of guy. Setting his temper aside for the moment, he doesn't tend to get worked up about things, and as such avoids a lot of the everyday drama most people seem to experience. Granted, his own unique attributes and acquaintances generally get him involved in far more rigorous types of drama instead, but Shizuo's life is basically like water in a river. It flows along, following the natural contours of the earth, making no fuss, and if sometimes or very frequently it crashes into violent rapids and waterfalls, it's always going to follow its path and calm down again into a soothing flow.

(Shizuo is fond of this metaphor, even if he realizes that it's pretty inaccurate, because it allows the hope that in the end the river might flow into a calm lake, with an undisturbed island in the center.)

Shizuo's life doesn't need to be like everyone else's. He's got all of his basic needs fulfilled, and has even managed to make some progress on his desires, too. He has no _reason_ to hate his life, just as he doesn't really have any reason to love it – so Shizuo, very practiced at simply accepting things the way they are, is willing to accept this too. His life is okay, and he's content with it.

His life is... disconnected in a way, it's far too vivid in all the wrong arenas, and Shizuo is just too unmoved by most events. He walks throughout Ikebukuro, and he sees people who experience every emotion so easily in a way he just isn't capable of. Shizuo's emotions are encased in layers of stone, sealed off from most of the world, and it takes correspondingly strong blows to break through and expose them. Once reached, he feels that his emotions strike him far harder than they do anyone else, though perhaps that's just a result of him not really understanding how other people operate at all.

What this means is that it takes catastrophically dramatic events to even phase Shizuo, and unless something of that sort is going on, Shizuo isn't going to get worked up about anything. His rages don't even count in that regard; for the most part, they aren't even anything personal, just a facet of Shizuo that he can't control going wild and settling down again. So long as he can just put his sunglasses back on and walk away after such anger, it doesn't really affect how Shizuo views his day anymore; he's learned to take those occurrences for granted, to deal with them and move on.

And so, to himself and to others if they ever asked, Shizuo will freely acknowledge that he's pretty content with the state of his life.

What he is far less willing to say, is that his contentedness springs mostly from resignation and a lack of true involvement. Nothing makes his life _terrible_ , because Shizuo knows he does have some good things going for him and because Shizuo is so incredibly indestructible that it takes a lot to make anything truly terrible for him.

But nothing make his life _great_ either, and for all he hopes, Shizuo isn't the most imaginative man, and he can't picture anything ever doing so. He stands apart from others, unaffected and unhurt throughout most everything, and this means that he doesn't really suffer enough to feel anything less than contentment.

It also means that he's never truly happy either, and Shizuo yearns desperately for such an emotion. He goes to great lengths to believe that one day he will be able to experience it. Though he's not like Izaya, doesn't claim to love or even especially care about humanity at large, Shizuo does _envy_ them horribly for their capability to be truly _happy_.

Shizuo isn't, and hasn't ever been.

But he's never been broken yet either, and so long as that's true, Shizuo remains content. Anything more is impossible; anything less – just indulgence.


End file.
